Re: a positive plan

I doubt, but hope, that the Bush Admin is considering that to lift the
sanctions on Iraq -- and ideally to *vastly* fund a rebuilding and aid
program, perhaps under the International Red Crescent -- would likely confer
an *enormous* strategic advantage.

Leaving aside the morality of it all, Iraq is a breeding ground for
desperation and hatred of the US -- yet it is an Islamic nation of millions
that we will need to have on our side in any reasonable approach to the
terrorism problem.

To dredge up a phrase with very unfortunate resonance, this will truly be --
and indeed always was, since we have been waging war for a long time -- a
war for "hearts and minds..."

***
BTW -- if anyone has access to the September 2001 issue of Jane's
Intelligence Review (Vol. 13, No. 9) please contact me.  Thx.

mbz




On 9/16/01 11:55 AM, "Bijan Parsia" <bparsia-vEoVa6Jh+/J4piUD7e9S/[email protected]> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 [email protected] wrote:
> 
>>> How can we "combat" such horror? Well, step one in my book is to stop
>>> *committing* it. Close to or more people die each month in Iraq. Each
>>> month. Serbia is mostly rubble, much of it
>>> contaminated. Columbia...Columbia is a disaster area. And we've
>>> declared
>>> "war" there (though "not really").
>> 
>> This is a dangerous slippery slope.
> 
> Note the "step one" part. Are you seriously arguing that halting much of
> the active violence we commit is the first step to diaster? I think you
> are making the slippery slope *fallacy* here.
> 
> Let me give you an example: Even last week I wouldn't have supported just
> cutting off aid to Israel, poof. The situation was (and is even
> moreso) delicate and destabilizing it could produce a lot of harm.
> 
> But I do think we can just stop bombing Iraq. Really. We don't need to
> bomb every three days. I think we can rationally life sanctions, but there
> are a lot of political interests here and around the world that have to be
> navigated in doing so.
> 
>>  If we are going to simply withdraw
>> from the world then what does that make us?
> 
> I didn't say that. I said stop committing terroristic horror. Surely it's
> possible to do the one without "simply withdrawing from the world".
> 
>>  If we have the capacity to
>> ease suffering, and we do not even try what does that make us?
> 
> Better than someone who increases suffering continually. Remember that
> most if not all of the suffering we cause isn't do to well meaning
> blundering but explicit, deliberate policy goals. We could have easily
> stopped the Rwandian genocide. We didn't. We are directly supporting the
> genocide in East Timor. Etc. etc. etc.
> 
> 
>>  As an 
>> example, take the issue of Aparteid.  If we had not used sanctions it
>> is likely that that oppressive system would have lasted a lot longer,
>> perhaps even until today.
> 
> The sanctions against SA were vastly different from the sanctions against
> Iraq. A million people didn't die of the sanctions against SA.
> 
> Plus, our govt sucked at SA sanctions...remember Reagan's "constructive
> engagment". Look at our Cuban sanctions (a clear crime). Look at our
> policy toward China. Etc. etc.
> 
>>  While I agree that there are a litany of
>> evils included in the actions you have mentioned there is an equally
>> severe moral abuse in not even attempting to right these wrongs for
>> fear of making enemies.
> 
> Again, I think you read the wrong thing into what I said. I don't think we
> should stop our own commission of terrorist horror to keep from making
> enemies. I mean that we *should* LITERALLY "combat" such horror
> *whereever* it occurs. The simplest, cleanest, most effective thing we can
> do to reduce such horror is to stop doing it.
> 
> Now, given the huge reduction in human misery that we can accomplish by
> refraining from producing or supporting the production of it, what *then*
> should we do to defend ourselves against it? I'm not sure. I happen to
> think that a *happy* side effect of reducing our crimes is that we'll be
> less likely to be *subject* to such crime. But that's an empirical issue.
> 
>>  As a further example take the recent Farce in
>> Durban.  Following a policy such what you have implied above, a
>> conference on ending racism would clearly create enemies in other
>> nations and might even, in the end, require some sort of enforcing
>> mechanism, such as sanctions, which would of course create further
>> enemies.   Thus, we should not attend such conferences, or any other
>> international conferences on any topic for that matter.
> 
> Really. Really really. I don't see how that remotely follows from what I
> said. I fully endorse strengthening international law...fair, country
> neutral international law. I think a lawful world would likely be a safer
> one.
> 
> Law alone or even vigorous enforcement of such, naturally, doesn't make
> one perfectly safe. But it tends to be MUCH better than lawlessness for
> most people.
> 
>>      What is needed is an entirely new formulation of our foreign
>> policy. It is not enough simply to say, "we should stop the sanctions
>> against Iraq" or "we should cease to use pesticide against peasant
>> farms in Columbia" or even "it is not right to bomb innocent people
>> that are citizens under a regime that is committing genocide."
> 
> Yes, it is.
> 
>>  unless 
>> you also supply an alternative to solve the underlying problem.
> 
> Hmm. I really really suspect that if we just withdrew the world would be,
> on balance, better. Really. And that's scary. Remember we rarely, if ever,
> heed anyone else's interests unless they align *exactly* with our own,
> *very* narrowly conceived. That is, the interests of our empire.
> 
>>  Where 
>> would the world be if it was always said, "my brother is in trouble,
>> but i can see no clear way of helping him, so i will not try."
> 
> Read some chomsky on the kosovo war (his book Rouge States has
> lots). While I think his "first, do no harm" principle isn't *quite*
> right, it's a reasonable approximation.
> 
> Some links: 
> http://zmag.org/Chomsky/articles/z9907-peace-accord.htm
> http://zmag.org/Chomsky/articles/z9804-rogue.html
> 
>> this is 
>> why it is important not merely to point out mistakes, but propose
>> alternatives.
> 
> If they were mistakes, that'd be one thing. I fail to see how our Iraq,
> Columbia, etc. etc. etc. policies are mere "mistakes"...they *are* our
> policy as planned.
> 
> The scale of horror we produce is so bad that if it were completely
> accidental, we should just stop.
> 
> The morally best case scenario is that we are inept doctors from the
> middle ages that think that leeches, blood letting, and amputation, plus
> packing the wounds with human dung extract from the bowels of plague
> victims is THE WAY to cure the common cold.
> 
> Perhaps better, we're witchhunters who think that just about anyone,
> healthy or not, is possessed and needs to be vigorously tortured or killed
> to save them.
> 
> While clearly, sanitation, sane doctoring, a bit of chicken
> soup, etc. would be positive steps, I think stopping our
> "misguided" behavior is the first step. This is regardless of whether our
> patients sue us for malpractice.
> 
>>      This is especially important with regards to the issue at hand. it
>> is easy,
> 
> Apparently not easy enough. Look how few are doing it.
> 
>> and important, to remind the emotional that it is just as
>> wrong to murder innocent people in a foreign land as it is for people
>> from a foreign land to murder innocent people here.  However, it is
>> more important to supply an alternative way to acheive justice.
> 
> It's not an "alternative way to achieve justice". The proposed way doesn't
> achieve justice.
> 
> I'm sorry if a murderer gets his case thrown out because a technicality,
> you DO NOT have the right to take matters into your own hands. Perhaps a
> better analogy: If a murderer gets parole, and you "aren't satisfied" with
> the "justice" achieved, you don't have a leg to stand on for killing him
> and a few of his friends, and a few bystanders. This is elementary.
> 
> This is the imperfect world: Sometimes the innocent are
> victimized; sometimes the guilty go free. Sometimes we have to decide how
> much innocence we will sacrifice to wack the guilty and vice versa.
> 
> So, are we conceptually committed to the possibility that we can't always
> make situations better? That sometimes doing nothing *is* the right
> thing, even when there is risk that it's the *wrong* thing? Are we
> committed to making the situation better when it's *easy* to do so (i.e.,
> Rwanada)?
> 
> It strikes me that if one fails to prevent massive horror when all
> evidence suggests it's trivial to do so, then worrying about the tough
> cases is superfluous.
> 
>>  If all 
>> that we can do is say what is wrong, but we can not propose an
>> alternative, then we have failed.  We have infact failed doubly, since
>> our failure to create a pardigm to apply to future situations and
>> troubles, so that these situations will continue to arise, and abuses
>> from both sides will continue.
> 
> Hmm. Really. Let's just ask, pragmatically, which is likely to produce
> more overall misery: Our current policies, or strictly binding ourselves
> to the spirit and the letter of international law. Then add, massive,
> actually humanitarian, aid. Hell, just add *modest* humanitatian
> aid. Hell, just forgive the odius debt that cripples countries around the
> world.
> 
>>      From the events of the last few years 2 specific question arise
>> is: what is the proper way to sanction a state which has wrongly acted
>> without unjustly harming its people? what is the proper way to respond
>> to a group of people that has acted unjustly without harming the people
>> and nations around them?
> 
> But these are much later questions. They presume that we're acting
> remotely justly overall. I.e., that we have a role, period.
> 
> Take this specific question: What can the US do to reduce suffering
> around the world?
> 
> Ask that *first*. Will either of your questions show up near the top?
> 
> You're best counter case, IMHO, is Rwanda. We didn't support the killers,
> but we surely failed to even mitigate the massacures. We did so quite
> deliberately, in full knowledge of our ability to help. Hell, we inhibited
> *other* people from helping.
> 
>>  If we don't answer these questions then any
>> attempt we make to improve the current state of affairs is doomed to
>> failure.   
> 
> See above.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bijan Parsia.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bonobos maillist  -  Bonobos-4GNy1lrxftmrG/[email protected]
> http://monkeyfist.com/mailman/listinfo/bonobos
> 

-- 
Michael Zara
2100 Channing Way 251
Berkeley, California 94704
(510) 664 0729
[email protected]